I’m looking to prototype a head rest that will be used for user testing. Self skinning PU foam feels like the best fit however our normal prototype houses can only really offer harder foam. Does anyone have any experience in prototyping PU or know of a place that offers the service? China/Taiwan preferable
We made some prototypes in house using Smooth-On FlexFoam-iT (https://www.smooth-on.com/product-line/flexfoam-it/). The results were ok, it did foam and did skin, but the skin was very thin and did not have full coverage. Perhaps it had to do with our parts being pretty thin. It suited our purposes (brief functional testing, not show models), though. We had done others in the past that were more successful, but I can’t remember offhand the product we used (may have been the same - those parts were thicker).
We also got a quote from Suburban Model (http://www.suburbanmodel.com/), who was recommended to us by another model shop, to make some prototypes and I wish we went with them. Their technique is to paint solid urethane onto the mold, close it up, then pour in the foaming urethane. That way you can get a much tougher foam.